Religious Freedom and Minority Rights under the Biden Administration

Abstract

Abstract: Libertà religiosa e diritti delle minoranze sotto l’amministrazione Biden. – The Trump Administration privileged the concerns of a select group of conservative white Christians, harmed religious minorities and weakened the separation of Church and state enshrined in the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. Since Day One of his presidency, when he repealed the “Muslim ban”, Joe Biden demonstrated his intention to take a dramatically different approach to religious freedom and to Church/State relations. In a nutshell, his agenda pursues the protection of religious freedom for all, and particularly for vulnerable minorities; the restoration of the separation between State and religion; and the advancement of international religious freedom as a fundamental and interdependent human right. 

In the following pages, I first provide a brief analysis of the roots of the policies pursued by the Trump administration in the field of religion. Next, I present an overview of the most salient actions implemented by the Biden administration to purse its agenda. I then analyze the discrepancies between such actions and the current US Supreme Court’s judicial trend in the field of religion. Finally, I provide an evaluation of the overall state of religious freedom and Church/State relations and I identify the potential challenges that lie ahead.

Keywords: religious freedom; separation of church and state; supreme court; religious exemptions; fundamentalism.